From an array of five test tubes, Pierrot Ain picked the second, then,
fearful suddenly, replaced it and took the third. As this also felt wrong,
he stopped to mull his options.
    Perhaps the increased risk of discovery had not been good enough
reason to avoid taking written notes. Or he could have used a code, or
eaten his papers every so often. The latter had more ritual appeal than
practical, but even so...
    Ain tapped each test tube in turn, watching the meniscus on each one
shake with a slightly different frequency. It was no good. He said a short
prayer to no one in particular and drank the second tube. The four others
got stoppered and placed in his bag.
    Fifteen seconds later, he stumbled outside.
    Fifteen seconds after that, he threw up in an alley and became nearly
invisible.
    Wrapping his winter clothes tighter around him to cover exposed skin,
Ain set out for the haunted house, certain of his coming success.

    The front door was still unlocked. Pierrot slipped inside and shook
off his clothes. Though he knew the master of the house to be blind, he
had never discovered whether fabric had the same psychic stench to it as
the unaltered human body, and didn't want to risk it. He crept through the
first floor without incident, brushing recessed switches, eluding the gaze
of the portraits in the main hall, and whispering meaningless syllables to
items of furniture that creaked aside to let him deeper.
    Pale-skinned but solid, a few figures blocked his path once. Taking
them for other outsiders who had gotten lost in the house, possibly chil-
dren, he gritted his teeth and poked one in its fishlike chest with his
left pinky. The figures fell back, keening quietly, and let him through.
As he left earshot, their plaint turned melodic, an ode to his cruelty or
perhaps perseverance.

    Ain found himself warm despite his nudity. After inching past the last
of the points where his previous gambits had faltered, his way was blocked
by a slab of onyx, polished to a lapidary sheen.
    He could almost feel the flashcards under his fingers. Onyx. Best if
mined under waxing moon. Holy to certain errants sects in Europe. Protects
against attacks of a sexual nature. Same astral composition as nitrogen,
glass devils, woodwind instruments--
    Ah, that was it. He sang back the tune those ghouls had given him
earlier, at which sound the slab split open obligingly. Cautiously he con-
tinued to sing until he reached a high note his voice couldn't produce.
Immediately the air thickened and he heard motion above him.
    Everyone's a critic, he thought, running.

    He made it through the room stacked high with rabid dogs in seven
steps, few enough not to anger them.
    He closed his eyes at the pageant of seductions, despite suspecting
none of them would get to him anyway. Without a view of his peculiar soul,
the house could only offer generic enlightenment, one-size-fits-all skanky
figures cavorting, ordinary safety.
    He ate one of the candles in the chapel, just because.
    As he laughed his way into the high tower, he reflected that he might
in fact be losing his mind to the chemical, and stopped to catch his
breath outside a door he believed to be the last one he would pass through.
It didn't matter. There would be something on the other side.
    Five feet away, a blind man breathed in.

written for Holly on the opposite couch 11/2/08

"Ain" is a less-used way to spell the name of the Hebrew letter Ayin, which I was initially taught was silent, then later told stood for a "soundless sound".

Because the word "figures" is so unemphatic, I wanted to refer to them differently later on, but "those ghouls" answers the wrong question. And then, I'm embarrassed to say, I rushed the last few lines not because I was low on time but because pizza was waiting for me. Even so, this seems like a vast improvement on #96, whose unwritten core it reused about half of. (#97 used the other half.)

- everything is by Aaron Mandel; please ask first if you're about to steal something -

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